Cable Companies Add 1 Million Broadband Subscribers in Q1

Media

Published: May 16, 2015 8:40 am

Last Updated: April 27, 2020 6:16 pm

In the first quarter of 2015, U.S. cable companies added more than 1 million net broadband subscribers, or about 86% of the total broadband growth of nearly 1.2 million new subscribers during the period. Over the past year, cable companies have added about 90% of the new broadband subscribers and have raised their market share to 60%, compared to telephone companies.

Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA) posted net broadband additions of 407,000 and now claims a total of 22.37 million broadband subscribers, nearly double the total of second-ranked Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC), which added 328,000 subscribers to bring its total to 12.58 million.

The data were reported by Leichtman Research Group on Friday. The firm noted that this was the first quarter to see net cable broadband additions top a million since the first quarter of 2008.

The top-ranked telco was AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), with 69,000 net additions to bring the carrier’s total to 16.1 million. Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) added 41,000 net new broadband subscribers and now claims a total of 9.25 million.

Leichtman Research also reported that AT&T and Verizon added 573,000 subscribers to their fiber-optic networks, U-verse and FiOS, respectively, in the first quarter. However, the two combined posted a net loss of 463,000 DSL subscribers. U-verse and FiOS broadband subscribers now account for 54% of telco broadband subscribers, compared to 40% two years ago.

To emphasize the growth in broadband subscribers compared with video subscribers, Comcast reported that it lost 8,000 video customers in the quarter. While a loss of that many video subscribers is quite small in the great scheme of things, the surge in broadband subscribers and the loss of video subscribers combine to indicate the direction consumers want to go — and it is not toward cable packages of 200+ channels of which consumers typically watch just 17.

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